How true and well substantiated this truism
stands. But life is a journey of paradoxes galore – crescendo of them in fact.
The one involving money stands blatantly vindicated and perhaps tops the list
of them. That money came into existence for convenience and equitability or
parity is well known, but it has infused disparity instead. Would the inventors
have had even an iota of clairvoyance of the current era – as the society
stands completely bedevilled by it? Lets leave it at that, and try to
understand that all that was, is there and will be is only adding to the woes
of mankind. Dynamite invented by Nobel is an eloquent example of paradox – especially
when you juxtapose the famous “Nobel Peace” prize every year! A commonsensical
inference is that “Life exists in duality”. Good and evil, black and white,
night and day, etc, etc.
Everybody needs money to subsist. Whether
they need only to subsist or exist is the question. In their sphere of
existence, mankind has a set of five innate enemies in mystic parlance – Kaam(sex), Krodh(anger), Lobh(greed), Moh(attachment)
and Ahankaar(Ego), not necessarily in sequence of impact as they are all deeply
correlated, but more in the order of ease of saying. If we introspect, all of
these are centred somehow around Ego. All of them also seem to emanate however, out
of Ego, the mother of all problems of
mankind.
‘Kaama’ as in Hindu scriptures is indeed a
phenomenon of great intrigue. It begins to manifest at puberty which sets-in at
around the teens, and societal norms lay down sexual intercourse only after
marriage. Suffice to add that west is trying to cope with teen pregnancies not
by forbidding the acts, but by educating the teens. I am not by any chance
sitting in any judgement on them or us. Fact is that need manifests naturally,
but society prevents it at the time of manifestation. Most religions advocate monogamy in the
institution of marriage, but in reality the laws willy-nilly permit polygamy –
divorce is what I am hinting at. Reality however, is that of existence of
polygamy, both in and outside of marriage. The strength of ‘Kaama’ as in Hindu
scriptures, forced the great
Vishwamitra out of meditation when he succumbed to seduction by Menka who
was extremely beautiful. So how easily it will entrap a common man can well be
conceived. This natural phenomenon is greatly correlated to ‘Ego’ .
Krodh – anger, is an offshoot of Ego. When
latter is hurt, we are angered. Lobh – greed of anything be it material or
non-material comforts. Moh – the attachment to our possessions, our progeny or
our beliefs. So actually all these are seamlessly correlated and so deeply
enmeshed into each other, that all of them push the man into hot pursuit of
Money. Money is the means to all these
ends where man tries to amass as much as possible and satiate all these
perverting instincts. Society under the umbrella of meritocracy, open and
transparent competition envisages that all will get what they deserve, but
whether the institutions behove and are able to uphold the sanctity of what is
believed is questionable.
Alexander the Great’s last wish to his
commander-in-chief was, “ When you carry my coffin to the grave, keep both my
hands out, so that people see that I came into this world with nothing and am leaving
with nothing”. But the journey of his life belies his last wish. Ego indeed was
at play, with the other four catalysing in their own way, by events that came
up in his life time of conquests.
